


Voltaic Arc

by Sapph



Series: If I run I'll never know [2]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Criminals, Alternate Universe - Villains, Multi, Or More Like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-10 02:48:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5567671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sapph/pseuds/Sapph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He can trace the tension from the rigid line of Iris' shoulders to the awkward clench of Eddie's jaw, and it rings louder than their shouting match two weeks ago. Barry's not sure what irritates him the most, the fact that they're still fighting or that they think they can pretend they're not.</p><p>(It is the world around him that refuses to settle, like the earth-shattering dissonance of tectonic plates—everything always collapses in the end.</p><p>At least, for a long time, that's what he tells himself.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Voltaic Arc

He sighs and ponders the way his skin pulls uncomfortably when he spreads his fingers, how the pulse of his heart flutters in his thigh and twinges in his fingertips—there is an ache that comes with thinking about one's own anatomy.

 

It's hard to feel like you belong when even your bones won't slot into place, when they shift and grind beneath your skin. His skeleton feels like a stranger, his mind a traitor, and he can't quite distinguish this foreign husk from his own body, at least not long enough to figure out _what_ he is.

 

(Truth accumulates in the filter of his teeth, hot and stinging. He wants to yell and curse and bargain, but what's the point when no one listens? As time passes the words cools on his tongue until all that's left is an unpleasant numbness.

 

He's fifteen when he stands silent and shivering in the front yard while his foster mother tells the two wary officers that everything's fine and the neighbours must have been mistaken.

 

He is fifteen when he realizes that the world has muzzled him.)

 

“What?” he asks her, because he can almost feel the sting of her fierce scrutiny even as she peels the dark mask from her face. Her bow is behind him on the sofa, the quiver spilled across his kitchen table, and one of her daggers is still stuck in the moulding of the doorway. He can't help but think Eddie wouldn't like the mess.

 

Iris hooks her fingers beneath his jaw and lifts his chin. He doesn't recoil, but the intensity of her gaze is as overwhelming as it was the first time their eyes met across that rooftop. When he had pulled her arrow out off his target's chest, and she had left him there baffled with a smirk and a brisk salute.

 

“You're moping,” she says, her voice carrying amusement. He pushes her hand away and scowls, but she just chuckles fondly and runs her fingers through his hair instead. She tends to do so when he's withdrawn, when distance gapes at every point of contact. Barry doesn't know if it's meant to calm him down or convey some sort of message, but it's a gesture that, he's loath to admit, he's come to appreciate.

 

“It's only a couple of days,” Iris reminds him, “he'll be back before you know it.”

 

“I don't care,” he mutters beneath his breath. He expects her to laugh or roll her eyes, but the heavy exhale that rocks her shoulders startles him, almost as much as the nails that drag across his jawline. He doesn't have the heart to push her away again and isn't that just pathetic.

 

“You're a terrible liar,” she tells him even as she leans down to brush her lips against his temple. He presses his tongue against the upper ridge of his teeth and doesn't correct her.

 

(His mind feels a lot like a prison as he tries to force his thoughts out between the bars, away from the commotion inside his head—there was a storm within him long before the lightning struck.

 

They won't let him see his father, no words that pass his lips ever change any minds. Even at his best they don't believe him, so he bites his tongue and waits. They won't let him see his father, but when he's eighteen they won't have a choice.

 

By then it is far too late.)

 

–

 

He doesn't react when Iris begins to draw patterns on his back, the tip of her finger tracing the edge of his shoulder blade. There is a scar there, beneath the smooth surface of his skin, a hollow space between the harsh cut of bones where someone once scraped out his ability to trust.

 

(People are flesh and bone, stained skin and bloodied teeth. People are animals, scavengers longing to dig their fangs into corpses. But it's okay, truly, because they're civilized and their claws are metal.)

 

He feels her fingers brush the base of his neck and wonders if she knows he's not asleep. A tiny, uncertain part of him wonders if she does this often.

 

(Prometheus brought mankind a fire that consumed; the gods cursed them to feed on death.)

 

Some people are made stronger by the suffering they endure, he learns, others do not survive.

 

He knows she is the former kind.

 

(There is fire in his veins.)

 

–

 

There is something about pressing his body against another's that shifts him off balance, its been that way for as long as he can remember, but he brings their lips together and breathes in Eddie's presence with a smile even though he can't quite tell if the feeling in his stomach is joy or nausea.

 

He can feel Eddie's chuckle vibrate through his chest as his arms tighten and the world shakes dangerously. This fear of intimacy wasn't born out of strife, he knows, it is rooted into the very core of his being; but life has never given him the opportunity to explore why.

 

(Love is a cage, he decides. It traps him, in the past, in himself, in another. Like a dead limb, he needs to cut off the loss before he dies with it.)

 

“Thank god you're back,” Iris says, her breath hitching as Eddie draws her into the embrace. Guilt clots in his throat as he thinks about how distant he has been lately. Because as confident as Iris comes across, he knows she has her own doubts regarding their relationship.

 

He wishes he could make her feel at home like Eddie does, but he isn't sure what home's supposed to feel like anymore.

 

(His first kiss is a quick peck on the lips that turns into tongues and bumping teeth. He initiates it and it's _okay,_ a bit uncomfortable and strange, but he feels a little braver afterwards. The heavy weight in his stomach is just nerves, he tells himself as watches the car drive off, it must be.

 

People talk a lot about love and attraction; they make it sound so easy to recognize, but years pass and he can't quite figure out what it all means. It makes him feel lost. It makes him feel a bit less human.

 

His first kiss is a kiss goodbye, he thinks there's something damning about that.)

 

“He's been sulking since you left,” Iris jests. He thinks he should take offence to that, but he's too tired to protest. The heaviness of their prolonged nearness begins to weigh, a familiar unease coiling against his sternum, but their arms are scaffolding and he thinks he might be willing to face this storm, if only to see what remains once it's passed.

 

–

 

“I told you he was mine,” Iris hisses, and Barry cocks his head at the arrow slowly carving its way through the air, following its trajectory to impact.

 

“What the hell, Iris!” Eddies cries out, his shocked gaze snapping from the arrow buried in wall next to his head to the woman who fired it. “Are you insane?”

 

“I told you he was my kill.”

 

“Your kill,” Eddie echoes incredulously, before his disbelief turns into outrage “You let him get away last time.”

 

Iris gasps in indignation. “ _You_ were the one blocking my aim!”

 

Barry winces as their volume increases and wonders if perhaps he should have snatched the arrow out of the air after all.

 

–

 

He can trace the tension from the rigid line of Iris' shoulders to the awkward clench of Eddie's jaw, and it rings louder than their shouting match two weeks ago. Barry's not sure what irritates him the most, the fact that they're still fighting or that they think they can pretend they're not.

 

(It is the world around him that refuses to settle, like the earth-shattering dissonance of tectonic plates—everything always collapses in the end.

 

At least, for a long time, that's what he tells himself.)

 

–

 

So maybe he and Iris aren't the neatest of people, but they're not the worst either. It's not like they _try_ to make a mess, it just kind of happens sometimes. It's just their misfortune that Eddie likes things to be in order.

 

“You know this is _my_ apartment, right?” Eddie remarks, frustration evident as he clears their clutter of the coffee table; and while it's technically true, it's a bit unfair seeing as they've practically been living here for over a month.

 

The rise of Iris' shoulders is a tell-tale sign of her anger, and Barry really doesn't wish to be in the middle of this argument. He's used to living in other people's houses, and he's used to packing his bags and moving on.

 

He's out the door before the yelling starts.

 

–

 

Times like these he almost resents his inability to get drunk. He sets down the shot glass and tries to ignore the thickness of the air, turning his bored gaze towards the people gyrating on the dance floor—no one ever fits into these places completely sober.

 

(It's his father he thinks of when the bottle is pressed into his hand once more. His fingers are numb and clumsy and he curls them tightly around the cold glass to keep them from shaking.

 

The world doesn't spin, it just feels sort of heavy, like gravity's crushing him to the ground. Someone bumps into his shoulder, grinning wildly, before swinging an arm around his neck. He's not sure what to think of it.

 

It's his father he thinks of when he brings the bottle to his lips. It's his mother's empty eyes he sees reflected in the mirror the next morning.

 

How much can one person lose before there's nothing left of them?)

 

“You look lonely,” someone says at his side, voice raised to carry across the noise.

 

He resists the urge to roll his eyes and smiles sweetly. “You sound desperate.”

 

The guy blinks, twice, before shrugging and ordering a drink. Barry watches him lean casually against the bar, obviously confident in his good looks, and is struck with a sudden ache to go home.

 

(When he closes his eyes he can still recall his father's grin and the tilt of his mother's head as she tried to hide her amusement, but home is a feeling he can't quite _feel_ anymore.

 

He's spend too much time angry at the world to ever belong in it again.)

 

Someone bumps into him and Barry wishes he was curled up on the couch between Iris and Eddie, watching one of those romantic comedies Eddie insists he doesn't like, or eating those way too expensive roasted nuts Iris denies buying. He wishes for that feeling of ease, Iris cheering as he manages to catch the nut she throws at him and Eddie way too engrossed in following the plot to even scold them—but the feeling isn't there, and its absence stings. He's alone in some crowded bar surrounded by strangers and no one to blame.

 

He wishes he wasn't such a coward, had confronted them about this earlier instead of waiting for the explosion. He wishes he hadn't run.

 

(It's not until he wakes up in the back alley of some dingy bar, his body aching all over, that he finally figures it out.

 

He is the villain of his own story.)

 

–

 

He'd almost forgotten how the days tended to blur together, an endless stretch of random moments, cigarette smoke, and cracked mirror smiles. He remembers slamming his fist through a wall outside the bar two days ago, but he also recalls the sound of shattering glass. In fact, the dull throb in his hand would suggest that happened quite recently. He can't remember waking up this morning or what he ate for dinner yesterday, and maybe that's why his stomach is cramping. Perhaps it's foolish to look for a sequence of events anyway. Linearity is a man-made concept after all. Maybe he should just run. Running means surviving, and that's what he does best, isn't it?

 

Except he finds himself stuck in this place, racing back and forth the city limits like they are some kind of force field fencing him in. He should leave now, find some other city with other people. Dull, average, s _afe_ people; who scream and cry and call him a demon all because he can run faster than the speed of sound. And maybe because he's about to kill them, but hey everybody needs to make a living.

 

Yet the cops in this city are so incompetent; it would be a shame to leave now.

 

He knows that's not the reason he stays, but perhaps in time he can convince himself. He just needs to remind himself that it doesn't matter; everyone ends up bloody and broken. People are better left as shadows on the wall.

 

(His first kill doesn't leave him shattered, or burdened with guilt. No, when looks at the blood pooling on the chequered tiles all he feels is _relief_.

 

When the lightning strikes he thinks it must be karma, that this is the day he dies. The power harnessed leaves him breathless, a blur, a storm that passes in the blink of human eyes—there are days he wonders if he exists at all.

 

He runs and runs and runs, but he can't outrun himself.)

 

–

 

“I thought you stopped running.” Eddie sounds tired, like he hasn't slept in days, and perhaps he hasn't. Barry wouldn't know; he hasn't been back.

 

He doesn't feel guilty, nor does he miss it.

 

This is a nice rooftop.

 

“Do you ever wonder about the stars?” he asks, tilting his head towards the dark expanse above. He hears a sigh spill past Eddie's lips, a short exhale of breath that belies his calm demeanour. He knows he could crack open that smile and free the demons that lie within that patient gaze, but he's tired of destroying things. “How many of them are dead?” he continues softly, vaguely aware of the shudder in his legs and the tremors cracking through his spine. “I can't tell the difference.”

 

“You're not,” Eddie cuts in, and the sternness of the man's voice startles him.“ _We_ 're not.”

 

He blinks as the world is shrouded in black smoke, bone crashing into concrete. The sky is reaching down with its wispy claws to swallow him, but the fire in his veins has already obliterated everything in its path.

 

Eddie's hands are cool against his skin, fingers cradling his jaw. _Steady_. For a moment the dizziness abates, and he catches the sound of his name amongst the rumble of words.

 

He's fucking hungry.

 

\--

 

Iris kisses him like he holds an answer she desperately wishes to extract. All he can offer her is the ghost of a smile not ready to be exhumed.

 

He spends the morning in bed with a full stomach, his cheek pressed against Iris' collar bone and Eddie's warmth against his back. He can't tell if they've made up or simply called a cease-fire for his benefit. Their arms are closing in around him like the claw of an arcade game, one he doesn't know the rules of.

 

(He's never good enough, whether he tries or he doesn't. He can't meet their expectations if no one will tell him what they are.

 

Life is a game without instructions, and he's tired of losing.)

 

“I can't do this,” he confesses against the hollow of her clavicle. Iris stirs and Eddie shifts, but by the time they tighten their grip, he's long gone.

 

\--

 

The stars are bright and beautiful and he can't help but resent them for it.

 

(It's like a flash of lightning in the night, his eyes burn and everything suddenly seems darker.)

 

The fire that churns in his veins erupts like a rain of lava and volcanic ash across the surface of his skin.

 

(His world is ripped open at the seams, insides bulging like a stuffed toy's.)

 

He wants them here. Oh god, he  _wants_ them.

 

(Mom?)

 

But he's afraid of what they might want from him.

 

\--

 

There are scorch marks on the wall, and what he thinks is probably somebody's brain.

 

“Explosive arrows?” he guesses.

 

Iris whirls around and punches him right in the face.

 

“You deserved that,” she mutters weakly as his identity registers. He blinks numbly at her, stunned by the impact of her studded glove. “You left.” She scowls. “ _Again_.”

 

“I'm sorry,” he manages to reply. Her gaze softens, and calloused fingers reach to gently wipe the blood from his upper lip.

 

“I'm sorry,” she echoes, her eyes suspiciously bright, and he laughs until he chokes on the water in his lungs.

 

\--

 

“What am I supposed to do if you keep running?” Eddie sighs, not even batting an eye as Barry hops onto the kitchen counter.

 

He thumps his feet against the cabinet and shrugs. “Catch me?”

 

“Will you do the same?” Iris throws back as she coaxes the icepack from his hand to hold against the bruising of his face. He thinks it rather redundant considering it will be healed soon enough, but allows her to do so nonetheless.

 

He swallows uneasily, avoiding her imploring gaze. “I'll try.”

 

(There is a brief sense of relief between the two moments of contact, between the fingers leaving his wrist and the knuckles stroking his cheekbone.

 

There is something about touch that seems inherently cruel to him.)

 

–

 

He clenches his hand around the metal until its jagged edges dig into the skin of his palm. Iris grins his way and her expression leaves no doubt that she's received a similar key.

 

He thinks about reminding them that he doesn't really need one. He can phase through solid objects after all.

 

He thinks about telling Eddie that he doesn't need a key to his apartment just so he doesn't feel left out. Barry knows what it means to Iris, or he can guess at least; a promise, an acknowledgement of some kind. It doesn't mean the same thing to him.

 

He thinks about saying many things, but the words get caught in the all-too-familiar cage of his teeth. _Thank you_ , he considers, but he doesn't feel as grateful as their eyes suggest he should.

 

He says nothing and hopes they'll interpret his silence as one of surprise instead of the confusion that has sunk its grappling hook into the base of his skull. He rubs his nape and musters up a smile, restless fingers fiddling with the key—his key.

 

Whatever that means.

 

–

 

Sometimes, he thinks it's too easy, to rest his head on Eddie's chest and endure the jolts of his laughter, to lean into Iris' touch and reject the phantoms that once stood in her place. Sometimes, he think he should fight it, just on principle, just to be sure. But the truth is, he doesn't _want_ to.

 

They stay in bed when he gets up. They often do. He doesn't mind, just closes the bedroom door and attempts to extract his discomfort from the tight clench of desire.

 

He makes them breakfast and is rewarded with hesitant smiles and furtive glances—bitterness lines the roof of his mouth like excess grease he can't force down.

 

(It's always worse when he  _ tries _ .)

 

He leaves them at the kitchen table with a mumbled excuse and pretends it is the heavy smell of pancakes that makes his stomach churn.

 

–

 

The next heist they pull is a disaster. The plan falls apart somewhere in the middle when the alarm is triggered and _damn_ they must have upgraded their security. It's only when he's about to phase through one of the vault doors that he realizes he doesn't know how to take Eddie with him. In that moment, a static second where all he can hear is his own heartbeat, something desperate thrashes in his chest; something he thought died a long time ago. He ends up punching a hole through the reinforced steel... with his body.

 

It's Iris who hoists him up on the other side, looking rather dazed herself. Everything after that is a blur.

 

He wakes up on a soft surface, tired and dizzy and the socket of his shoulder screaming with pain.

 

“You heal extraordinarily fast,” an unfamiliar voice remarks. He rears then, choking on air as he tries to twist away and run.

 

“Shit. It's okay, Barry!” He knows that voice, those hands, and they stop him from lashing out; but the proximity of the unknown variable pulses through the room. He can feel it beneath his skin, invasively wedged between his vertebrae.

 

“It's okay,” Iris says, carding her fingers through his hair. He doesn't flinch from her touch, but his bones refuse to settle, as if someone rattled their frame. He sits up to Eddie's protest and gets a better look at the stranger.

 

“Caitlin's a doctor,” Iris explains. “And a friend.”

 

He should probably thank her, but then again he's done fine without any doctors till now. He's never liked them, they poke and prod and ask only empty questions.

 

(He used to look up to his father, wanted to be just like him; to save people, be a hero. But he learned early on that people are fickle and heroes aren't always rewarded. They don't always _survive_.

 

He's late again, the door is ajar and light tumbles through—darkness would've greeted him kindlier.

 

No one ever comes to save him.)

 

The woman's eyes are sharp but the sympathetic tilt of her lips is genuine. Perhaps she _is_ just trying to help, after all. Still, Barry thinks of this stranger near his unconscious body, and can't stop his anxiety from spiking. He knows Eddie and Iris did what they thought was best, but right now he can't help but resent them for it.

 

If there's one thing he hates more than even that disgusting tomato juice concoction Eddie keeps in the fridge, it's feeling vulnerable.

 

–

 

“I think you should strike battering ram off your resume,” Iris teases. He considers punching her shoulder but his own still twinges when he moves his arm so he decided against it.

 

He might also be—slightly irrationally—angry at her.

 

Warm hands settle on his shoulders, thumbs pressing into the base of his neck. “Don't do that again,” Eddie mutters in his ear, and he sounds as serious as Iris suddenly looks that all he can do is nod.

 

He traps the groan behind clenched teeth when deft fingers gently kneed his sore muscles and tries not to wonder if this impromptu massage is a manifestation of latent guilt. He lets his head fall back, eyes fluttering shut and steadfastly ignoring the onset of a smirk on Iris' face.

 

He's not expecting the lips against his neck nor the hands that grab his hips, fingers anchoring around the waistband of his jeans—they stir a fire in his stomach, one that burns and burns and leaves him dizzy on fumes.

 

He's been fine letting them near him—something he's suddenly very much aware of when Iris' ardent kiss has him responding almost instinctively—and yet he can't quite settle beneath this touch. Perhaps it's the intent that bothers him, leaves him grappling for that familiar ease as if it is right there at the tips of his outstretched fingers.

 

He wants them to continue, shudders with yearning when Eddie's hot breath puffs against his ear and Iris slips her hands beneath the seam of his shirt; but he also doesn't. His shoulder aches, his throat's too tight, and his skin threatens to give beneath the intimacy of their touch, as if the lightning's reeling in his veins, struggling to arc the space between them—he needs a moment to breathe.

 

He breaks the kiss, wondering if he'll ever learn how to fit his own skin, and his heart pounds painfully as if their disappointment might actually physically affect him—and isn't it funny how feeling always seems to make one hyper-aware.

 

Laughter shouldn't be the rattle of memories, it shouldn't get lodged behind his teeth and hiss through the gaps like some sort of toxic gas. And yet isn't it true that happiness kills, fills you up like a balloon until the moment's gone and you're left deflated, reminded once more of the emptiness that occupies your heart with its sharp, little, metal-trap teeth. He should be able to discern the difference between unrestrained smiles and uniform grins that threaten to split him open, pulling and pulling at his skin until he's numb—he should be able to figure out how he feels.

 

How do you recover the ability to recognize emotion when everything ends up draining away?

 

(He thinks about the scars that used to mar his skin and wonders how the lightning managed to wipe away all evidence of their existence—and how unfair is it to have the memory carved into your mind when there is nothing to touch?

 

His body is a foreign entity, pulsing and alive, and he can't reconcile it with the dead weight of his thoughts—there are no graves to mark the buried pain, not anymore.)

 

He thinks this might be it, the way their motions stutter and their features freeze, every fibre of his body straining to bridge the distance he created. But perhaps it is the ache behind his eyes that conjured the strobe light, because suddenly Eddie is pressing a kiss into his hair, muttering soothingly, and Iris is slipping her arms around his waist to embrace him, tightly as if afraid he'll run—air rushes into his lungs as if abruptly remembering the need to breathe, and maybe he's not angry anymore, maybe he's just tired.

 

Maybe he is grateful.

 

–

 

Eddie tricks him into drinking one of his awful vegetable smoothies, or rather manipulates him by staring until he caves. It's bitter and tangy and there are _chunks._ He tries his best not to gag, but is just grateful that he doesn't end up spitting it back out. And honestly, he knows they can't all be this awful. Eddie really mustn’t care about taste.

 

He should look into stealing them a better mixer.

 

He doesn't know if it's the lingering feeling of thick liquid sinking down his oesophagus or the fond exasperation in Eddie's sigh, but the moment Iris starts laughing, he knows there's something wrong. His heart stammers against his sternum, an unsettling thump-thump that feels a lot like tripping over an upturned stone.

 

Their gazes are bright with mirth but heavy, heavy and burning. He wipes his lips and hopes the flush of his cheeks isn't noticeable.

 

“Your face,” Iris manages to force out between giggles. Eddie chuckles and pats her shoulder.

 

Barry rolls his eyes. “It's not that funny.”

 

He doesn't even think to look for hidden traces of mockery or condescension. Their laughter is honest and warm, bleeding through his limbs like nicotine. A small part of him wants to snarl and snap like a corner dog, wants to rip open his ribcage and remind himself that this type of trust may well be what kills him in the end.

 

Maybe the problem is that he doesn't expect the pavement to be smooth, maybe he's compensating for uneven terrain and that's what keeps throwing him him off balance.

 

Falling was never something he did gracefully.


End file.
